“The word’s come down from on high,” he said, as he held out a dripping nacho for her. Jayne took one look at the cheese oozing off it and shook her head. She’d contented herself with fries and a coke. “The aliens are friendly and the human race should commit themselves to the Galactic Federation.”
Jayne scowled as she took a sip of coke. Most of the deaths also had one other thing in common; almost all of the victims used modern media like the internet, rather than old-fashioned print media or even television. She’d expected more interest from the newspapers, but it seemed as if the fix was in already. Reporters didn’t get anything like as much freedom of action as the public generally assumed. Only a complete fool of a reporter would push a story forward knowing that his editor — or senior management — would disapprove. The stories the public were told might bear only a slight resemblance to the truth, or might ignore the truth altogether. It was very rare for a story to be reported with the emotional detachment that was the key to true reporting.
“I see,” she said. “And who issued the order?”
“It came down from senior management,” Felt explained. He swallowed another nacho and burped contently. “The editing staff weren’t too chuffed about it, I can tell you. They normally get to decide how to slant the story themselves.”
Jayne nodded. “Is there anyone in the political field being pushed forward?”
“Not as far as we can tell,” Felt admitted. “We have orders to promote the causes of politicians who have verbally committed themselves to supporting the Galactics — and mankind’s efforts to get into their Federation. Those who refuse to support the Galactics…”
He didn’t need to finish the sentence. They both knew that a carefully-placed story, just one hair short of libel, could destroy a political career. There were plenty of politicians whose only fault had been irritating the media — and discovered that their side of the story was being presented with a magnifying glass held over his flaws. A written story always had more influence than the internet, although that might be changing. The newer generations were far more comfortable with the internet than their parents — and why should they allow editing staff to decide what they wanted to watch?
“Clever,” Jayne said. She was starting to have a very bad feeling about the whole thing. Part of her was tempted to bring Felt into her confidence, but one of the reasons he would never make it into the BAN was because he hated to question authority. Anything she gave him would end up in front of his superiors — where, if she were lucky, it would merely be dumped in the waste paper bin. “Thank you for your help.”
She spent just long enough with him to allay any suspicions that all she’d been interested in was knowing who might be trying to shape public opinion, and then escaped the racket. Walking down the streets towards her apartment, she made a handful of phone calls to a number of trustworthy bloggers. Two of them were her mortal enemies online, but she knew that they could be trusted to stand up for themselves. The truth was out there and — these days — bloggers did more for exposing it than any other part of the media. She was still smiling at the thought when she froze. An alien was standing at the bottom of the street.
They did look like humanoid snakes, she realised, as she found her legs shaking with tension. The alien moved on as if he hadn’t seen her, accompanied by a pair of uniformed soldiers and someone wearing a nondescript suit. He was smoking like a chimney, despite the health risks — or had the aliens promised a cure for cancer among their other miracles? And what were they doing near her apartment? Terrified, she spent nearly twenty minutes — after the alien had gone — telling herself that it would be safe to return home, before she headed to a nearby guesthouse and paid cash for a single night’s stay. Cold logic told her that the aliens wouldn’t have shown their hand so blatantly if they wanted to assassinate her — and they might not even have realised that she was on to them — but cold logic provided very little reassurance. As soon as she was in the rented room, she lay down on the bed and found herself shaking helplessly. She had never felt so threatened in her entire life.
It almost made her want to give up and vanish into the country, but the thought of the great reporters like Woodward and Bernstein forced her to carry on. Somehow, she managed to take a shower and head back outside towards her destination, the Spandrel Caravan. It had been founded as a place for bloggers to meet in person — an experience that was often disappointing — and served as neutral ground for the BAN. Jayne admired the idea behind the eatery, not least the meeting rooms, which had been secured with the most advanced technology in the public domain. Rumour had it that the CIA had sealed a lock on a story by outfitting the meeting rooms themselves and ensuring that no one could spy on the bloggers. She’d asked twelve of her comrades to meet with her; not entirely to her surprise, only eight turned up.
“Thank you all for coming,” she said. They were all reporting bloggers, rather than political analysts and commenters. Most of them had real journalist experience that they used to ensure that their reports were as clear and factual as possible. “I won’t mince words. I’m onto something that could be the biggest story in the entire history of journalism, but it could also get us all killed. Those of you who agree to work with me won’t just have non-disclosure agreements to worry about — this could be more dangerous than Jonny Russell’s scoop four years ago.”
She watched as it sank in, slowly. Jonny Russell had been an investigative reporter in California who’d discovered that the Governor of the state had close links with a Mexican criminal organisation that had been terrorising Northern Mexico and Hispanic regions in America. He’d nearly been killed four times before the FBI put him in a secure witness protection program; the story had ended the Governor’s career and gone a long way towards cleaning up California. And if he had been just an inch less lucky, he would have died and no one would have known the truth.
“We will have to assume the absolute worst,” she added. “There will be very powerful vested interests out to stop us. We may well end up dead — or worse. Do you have any objections to this level of danger? If so, you may as well walk out now. Nothing will be disclosed without your agreement.”
She’d carefully picked friends without families, without anyone dependent upon them. One left, a man she knew to be courting a girl at the office; the others remained where they were. It was the closest she’d get to agreement, she knew. Bloggers rarely trusted one another too closely. Besides, any official agreement might be detected by the aliens. The dead blogger’s name and address had been stored under tight encryption at a data haven in England and the aliens had still tracked him down. They had to assume the worst — and that meant that anything placed in a computer might be read by unfriendly eyes.
“I believe that someone is manipulating the world,” she said, and outlined everything she’d dug up over the past hour. The suspicious deaths, the media slant, odd trading on the stock market… and alien technology being hyped as the cure for all mankind’s ills. “And that someone may not be from this world.”
There was a long aghast pause. “My god, Jayne,” one of her friends said, finally. “Are you sure about this?”
“As sure as I can be,” Jayne admitted. “We need to do a hell of a lot more grunt work before we have anything more than suspicions — and then we need to decide what to do about it. Until then, no one is to put anything on computers; we’ll go back to the days when we used real notebooks and pencils. I want you to remember how the NSA hacked our computers last year; the aliens could be a great deal worse.”